(no subject)

[jamiesquared.livejournal.com]

Just figured I would share my story in case anyone else has an issue like mine.

My husband and I decided to buy a new TV for christmas instead of presents for each other. We got a great deal and have this amazing TV now. We get it home...manage to lift it onto the stand and hook everything up. We watch TV for awhile and its great.

Then, the screen goes black. We can still hear the show yet see nothing. I call RCN (our cable provider) and explain the problem. They walk me through a ton of coding stuff and said it should be all set. It happens again, and again and again. Two days of this and I was extremely frustrated. I call Sony (where we got the TV) and explain. They want us to return the TV or have a repair person look at it first to see why its doing it.

The repair man calls us and talks to me on the phone and explains that all the new LCD/Plasma TVs have new HDMI coding and require a new HD coded box...apparently the older HD boxes will have the problem were having because it isnt coded for the new HDMI input stuff. He tells me to call RCN back.

RCN insists that the guy doesnt know what he is talking about and there is no "new" coded boxes. Finally after many calls we get a guy out to our house. The first thing out of his mouth is that the older HD boxes arent coded right and we need a new HD coded box however they dont carry them...they need to special order one. Which we do.

Two days later we now have our new coded HD box. The man was really nice and told us all about how RCN is going to slowly phase out the older HD Boxes because of this problem however as of right now they only ordered 3! Crazy.

So I just wanted to pass along the story that if you happen to get a new TV you will need a new coded box and RCN will run you in circles...so insist! I figure this relates to the community since RCN serves this area :)

Comments

[xuth.livejournal.com]

Looking at all of the above snarking about the values of service between comcast, rcn and even verizon, I wonder why the real problem never shows up (though it's decidedly non-local) that we are being pushed into a broken standard that is HDMI. It is a standard that is designed and updated semi regularly not to upgrade capabilities but to control what types of devices can work with high def video. The data signal is encrypted and any licensed device must shut down or degrade it's data feed (per the license) if it detects a non-compliant device attached, which is what's going on in the case of the OP. The spec is occasionally modified (as people reverse engineer the system) forcing either a hardware or firmware upgrade to work at all with new equipment. This has already happened with HDMI, and both next gen dvd formats and stands to continue to occur semi regularly with all of these technologies.

[jamiesquared.livejournal.com]

I dont really understand a lot of what you just said :/

[xuth.livejournal.com]

Basically I'm saying that HDMI was designed for content and major hardware manufacturers first with customer interests second. The supreme court has said that anyone is allowed to make devices to interoperate with your hardware and that people are allowed to make personal copies of, for instance, a tv show so that you can watch it at a different time or on a different device (suppose you want to watch the tv show that aired while you were asleep on your ipod on the train to work). Legally no one can stop you from doing this. What HDMI is designed to do is make it so that no one can do this except under controlled (by the HDMI licensees, not the consumers) circumstances. You just can't buy an HDMI based recorder because no one that knows enough about HDMI is allowed to sell one per contract.
The problem comes when someone figures out how to get around it or when the FCC changes regulations saying to what can and can't be legally put into a new television, the spec must change. The former case is exactly what happened with hddvd and blueray (and why some players need to be updated before they'll play recent movies). I don't know what caused the hdmi spec to change recently.

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

Careful - you are confusing HDMI with HDCP.

HDMI is a perfectly good standard (although you might knock it for not having USB). It is basically DVI + optical audio.

HDCP is the copyright protection that is OPTIONAL on HDMI. HDMI does not imply HDCP (although HDCP does imply HDMI). There are hundreds of things wrong with HDCP, agreed.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

But why would Sony sell a TV that doesn't support the older HD standard just because it does support the new HDMI?